


Gasping

by sshysmm



Category: Utopia (TV 2013)
Genre: Cigarettes, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Other, Pain, Permanent Injury, Professional torturer has messed-up relationship with pain shock, christ what did I write, well I suppose it could be worse all things considered
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-08-22 06:30:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16592621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: When your job is inflicting pain it's only natural you'd be a bit curious about your own pain, right? Lee, in recovery.





	1. Chapter 1

It feels like there’s a great weight on the left side of his body. Like there’s a whole building on him, or a great big hand pressing down. When he breathes one half of him has to fight to draw the air in, and something in his torso whistles and catches. It’s a long time before he notices any pain, but when he does it is exquisite: a bright core in his lower chest, it heightens the contrast of all around it.

  
He takes a deep breath, gulping at the air so that his chest rises and the pain blooms, white petals unfurling over his body. His hand goes numb, his shoulder tingles with the song of his aggrieved nerves. He tries to suck in more air, his mouth fixed in a grin until the pain reaches the edge of him, and its white heat is snuffed out by black nothing.

  
When he comes round a middle-aged nurse peers down at him over silver-rimmed spectacles. “Ah, you’re back again.”

“I got shot,” Lee gasps, his smile shy and wondering.

  
The nurse grimaces and checks something on his notes. “You did. Through and through. Close range. There is quite a lot of lasting damage, I’m afraid.”

  
Lee’s smile twists into something wider. “I’ve never been shot before.”

  
The nurse hesitates, studying his patient with barely concealed distrust. He decides there is nothing worth saying to that and shakes his head with a sigh. A lot of effort has gone into patching this one up. He must be important to someone.

  
“Can I have a fag?” Lee asks, his eyebrows raising, innocent curiosity in his voice. The gentleness of the question and the guileless look in his eyes would throw most people off, but the nurse is more prepared for this question. There is a simple medical answer to give.

  
“No.”

  
Even though he is certain the patient does not have the strength to stand, the nurse takes an involuntary step back. When Lee’s smile is snuffed out it leaves an expression that can only unnerve.

  
“Y-you’ve been hurt too badly. One of your lungs is barely functional.”

  
“But I’m gasping!” Lee objects, despair twisting his features. It’s no good though, he can’t get up yet.

  
The nurse flees.

  
Over the days he lies staring at the ceiling, dreaming of nicotine. He has to make other amusement. No one comes to see him except nurses. No one tells him anything. The boredom is infuriating.

  
He can’t sit up easily: one of his arms doesn’t really do what he wants anymore. With effort, he can prop himself up with his right arm, and his bruised body howls as he tenses muscles and tries to claw his way up the bed. The pain is wonderful. He clenches eyes and jaw, his useless left arm clamped lovingly against the wound. With determination, once he finds a comfortable position from which to examine the agony of it, he can reach across his body with the good arm, fingers questing around the bruised area, starting tenderly at the edge, increasing pressure, moving towards the centre, where the bullet passed through.

  
It’s what he’s done to so many others, and he cannot now resist finding out what it means for himself. He is fascinated by the pain, unable to lie still when it is always there, a throbbing, furious itch at his side. Only the sterile padding and bandaging stops him from digging deeper, finding out more.

  
A sharp voice prevents him from removing those, and Lee opens eyes that have been squeezed shut.

  
He has to blink against the bright yellow light of the room until the silhouette resolves itself into the shape of a person. Lee beams when he recognises her.

  
“Doctor!”

  
“Hello, Lee,” she smiles, stepping closer to the bed.

  
“I got shot,” he tells her, feeling his pulse start to quicken as she pulls on her gloves and starts to work at the dressing on his wound.

  
The muddy, dull ache of the bruise is transformed into a red, rushing fire when she strips the adhesive patch back. He gasps, his head rolling against the pillow in ecstasy.

  
“I know, Lee,” she works with a smile, peering closely at the slow-healing flesh.

  
“I’ve never been shot before.”

  
Her touch is so frustratingly gentle. He looks up at her with hope in his eyes, his smile a fixed line.

  
“Is that so?”

  
“Yes. You see I’m very good at my job,” he watches her until she meets his eyes. He wants her to see the need there. “Very good at it,” he licks his lips.

  
The doctor studies him. She glances up, through the little window of his room, into the ward beyond. Her smile turns wicked, the glow of the sickly walls reflected on her skin. With a decisive motion, she steels herself and presses the bruised part of his body.

  
He gasps, grinning back at her.

  
It’s not enough; never enough; but he knew she would understand. She’s patched him up before. He’s watched her patch up others too, tying dressings a bit too tight if they’re rude to her, watching them closely as they flinch.

  
“You have beautiful eyes,” he tells her as she redresses the wound. His body tingles, he feels renewed, aware of every inch of himself.

  
“You can’t have them yet, Lee,” she smirks and drops a hand into the pocket of her lab coat, glancing out at the ward again. “I have a prescription for you.”

  
She takes out what he thinks at first is a pen, but then he notices the colours: it’s an e-cigarette. “Ah! Give it to me,” he flails with his right arm, trying to prop himself up and reach out at the same time.

  
She holds it at a distance at first, surveying his desperation with her own brand of pleasure. “You know that lung is basically fucked, don’t you?”

  
He gives her a withering look. “What do I fucking care?”

  
“This won’t be any good for you. But it won’t kill you as quickly as the old school methods,” she finally reaches out, dropping it onto his ready lip. His mouth closes gratefully about it, cold plastic and surprisingly weighty. But he draws in a great gasp and fills his body with the drug: his wound burns resentfully and his lungs and throat sting. He lies back against the mattress and luxuriates in it.

  
The doctor chuckles as she leaves, and Lee swims through ecstasy. Now he knows it’ll all be fine.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By request, some more Lee! Once the fascination of his own pain has grown stale, Lee isn't quite such a good patient. What has he been fixed up for that can't be done by anyone else?

Fine, he was soon to remember, was relative.

  
When you’ve not had a fag for weeks, the first gasp of nicotine is bound to make it all ok. The pain of breathing it in crackles pleasantly in your wrecked body and all you’ve gotta do is lie there and feel every inch of it.

  
But then, when you’ve smoked your way through the one cartridge you’ve got and people start saying words like ‘physio’ ‘round you — like ‘recovery time’ and ‘long term prognosis’ — things very swiftly become not fine. The boss wants him back at work, so he’s got to be work fit, whatever that means now.

  
It’s the kind of torture Lee tries to learn a thing or two from: a soft word of warning here, followed by a seemingly gentle touch there, then something is pulled or twisted and it shoots fire into his shoulder, hot white claws in his flesh that tip him momentarily into unconsciousness. It’s all terribly professional.

  
_Why the fuck do you need me?_ He thinks once. _You’ve got plenty of people who can do my job._

  
Once he’s out of bed he can get a handle on the full scale of the change. He feels like a canvas that’s been torn in two, one side hanging limp from the frame. His left arm will not respond to his demands or the demands of the endless doctors he’s presented to. His chest feels heavy, but only on the left again, like the lung he’s lost was keeping him upright, and without it he’s always at risk of sinking and drowning.

  
It’s a matter of pride to lose the crooked hunch his body wants to adopt. It tries to curl around the wound still, protective like a dying animal is. When he straightens he pulls scar tissue taut on his front and back, but it forms a chain of resistance that goes through his whole body. The effort of it makes his left hand clench convulsively and he smiles a savage smile because at last he has provoked a response from this sulking limb.

  
He is learning so much about how pain has a history all of its own. Understand old hurts and you’ll know better how to reopen them, how to slice against their grain and layer new pain upon old pain. How the body mirrors its own grievances: his healthy arm aches with fire when he uses it all day to do what two arms used to do together. Hot pain on one side, cold pain on the other.

  
He stands in front of a mirror, chill blue white of a fluorescent light on his body. It’s taken fucking long enough, but he’s got his hair just right again. It got long in recovery, and he’s kept it a bit longer so the quiff has more volume, but sculpting it so that it will stay hasn’t been easy.

One hand goes between comb and gel and water, over and over again, smoothing and sleeking the sides, feeling his way around parts of his head he can’t see in the mirror. He raises his chin and throws an appreciative wink at the reflection: a bit gaunter, but not really very different from before. He wears pain well, and he knows it.

Really, the hair should be done after the rest, but he had to know he could get it right this time. No point wasting a good suit like this if your hair’s a fucking mess.

  
Lee holds up the suit on its hanger and its yellow glow is reflected on his pale skin. Momentarily he forgets that he can’t hold it up with his right hand and run his left down the lapel, and a frown of mild annoyance crosses his brows. The fingers of his left hand twitch where they're held pinned to the front of his body, forefingers and thumbs tapping away at thin air.

  
It’s polyester, sure, but that means it’s easy to clean. The cut is nice. Really nice. It’s a gift from her, a sort of apology, probably. Instead of getting danger money he gets the best suits his twisted body can rock.

  
One leg at a time, Lee draws on the trousers, bending double with barely a grunt of discomfort. Deftly, his right hand fastens them and he tucks his fingers in the gap around the waist and purses his lips thoughtfully.

  
Not enough breakfasts with Arby these months past, even if Lee only ever had the coffee before. He’s rather looking forward to seeing him again, actually. They’ve got an easy rapport, him and Arby, they get each other.

  
The shirt is a bit more awkward. He unbuttons it on the hanger, blowing it a daft kiss like it’s a lover he’s undressing. He’s thought about how this has to work and scrunches the white material of a sleeve in his right hand, forcing the hole over his uncooperative left hand and dragging it round the angles of his arm. Against its sullen intentions, it’s useful to him for holding the shirt still. He shimmies his right arm behind him in search of the other sleeve and manages to shrug it on.

Then he has to deal with every damned button again, and the brief flash of smugness he felt at succeeding is superseded by a deeper pang of resentment. This is going to be a daily routine now. How the fuck can he go on congratulating himself just for managing to get dressed?

  
Lee files that annoyance away. It’s connected to a deeper, more furious core of anger that he’s going to save, keeping it nice and cool until he can use it. If no one else has got to that little bastard yet, Lee’s gonna enjoy showing him how kind he was before, and how messy a job he’ll do without the left hand to hold Wilson Wilson's face still while the right wields the spoon.

  
The jacket goes on in much the same way, and then he can feel the weight in the pocket and his smile settles back in. The heavy cylinders rattle together, smooth and filled with the stuff that will get him through all this. He’ll have vengeance on his body for its betrayal, if nothing else.

  
Contemplating the tie, he co-opts the fingers of his left hand into helping attach a new cartridge to his e-cig. Once he’s got it between his lips he tries arranging the tie on a hook on the back of the door, his tiring hand tussling with the silky material to try and get a knot started. Without his grip steadying it the e-cig is heavy in his mouth, and he drops it once or twice with a clatter on the tile floor, swearing as he bends to pick it up.

  
The doctor got him his cartridges but _she_ got him the suit, and she left the tie undone. It can only be a test.

  
At least he’s got his fags now. The nicotine relaxes him, helps his concentration, and gives him the precious patience he’s been in need of. It’s not gonna be pretty, it ain’t gonna do justice to the quiff and the suit, but by hell, he’ll get it done. Finally, Lee loops the loose, crooked noose over his head and returns to the mirror to straighten out the knot and the strands of hair that have escaped their position. He does up the suit buttons, finishes off with socks and shoes, and leaves the clinical area in search of his next job.

 

* * *

  
Her office is filled with the sun: warm yellow light on everything so that her hair is like spun gold. Milner gives him her sharp appraisal and nods brusquely as she stands.

  
“Good.”

  
She walks towards him and goes straight for the tie, as he knew she would, drawing it ruthlessly tight with a swift movement. Lee swallows, but he’s too careful to look at her expression: the twinkle in his eye is directed over her shoulder, cast out of the window into the bright spring day.

  
“I’ve got a very important job for you, Lee. I simply couldn’t trust anyone else with it.”

  
He raises his eyebrows, politely interested.

  
“We need you to find Arby and bring him back in.”

  
Well, that’s one turn up for the books. When she goes on to say that not only is Wilson Wilson alive, but a believer in the cause, Lee knows he’s failed to keep his expression in check.

  
Milner isn’t unnerved — far be it from her to be afraid of him — she just watches the transformation with a thin-eyed, thin-lipped scowl, her arms folded. She might as well be watching a kettle boil as seeing the subtle lines of hate move Lee’s features a little out of their habitual, bland shape.

  
“Look, Lee, it’s very simple,” she tells him. “You knew Arby best, and you stand the best chance of finding him when he doesn’t want to be found. If you don’t find him and bring him back, then your new partner will be Wilson Wilson, and you will continue to do your job as professionally as ever.”

  
She reads him with that icy blue gaze and there’s no invitation to respond. “Wilson has turned into a great asset, a man who truly understands the genius of the work we’re completing. You’ve already helped him see that much,” the red line of her painted lips bends in a cool smile.

  
Lee’s eyes widen at the joke and he tilts his head. He didn’t know she made jokes.

  
“The suit looks good,” she turns and goes around her desk, and he knows he’s dismissed.

  
On the same floor he’s got a new office, one all to himself. His access has changed and he can get loads more info from the system than before. He’s got a pocketful of cartridges to work through, a full mug of coffee, and a nice knotty mission to track down his mate. It has to be a promotion, Lee realises.

  
But Milner likes Wilson because he’s a believer.

  
The thought taps away at the back of his brain all afternoon, refusing to be hidden by the fog of nicotine or the fascinatingly horrible details of Arby’s file.

  
Wilson’s a believer. He shot Lee and he got rewarded, promoted even higher than Lee, who’s been here since before memories started.

  
Lee doesn’t believe in much, himself.

  
Life is really just pain, and anything else is superfluous.

  
He’s gonna find Arby of course.

  
But then he’s gonna find new ways to make Wilson Wilson squirm.

 

* * *

  
It’s not in Lee’s imagination that this could be part of Milner’s plan. He’s a simple soul, really, easy to deal with so long as you point the business end away from you. But Wilson has to learn the hardness the job requires, and there’s more than one way to torture a man. Lee will help him get there, even if he’s good for little else these days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep thinking about how underused I felt Lee was even when they brought him back, and if there's enough interest I might pick at this wound a little more when inspiration strikes. I figured y'all were here for him and not the OC lady doctor too, so left her out of this chapter, but honestly if people want to read more of that then let me know.  
> You guys have been a stunningly great fandom to write for so far <3

**Author's Note:**

> Self-indulgent nonsense because I love Paul Ready's stupid face. I might write more when I finish the series.


End file.
